Beyond the Story: Event Camp Twin Cities

The digital edition of Meetings: Minnesota's Hospitality Journal Winter 2011 is now online. Go ahead and explore all the wonderful stories inside. We'll be introducing some of these articles, like Meeting Accomplished below, in the blog over the next two weeks.

Event Camp is an event experience for, by and about meeting  planners. We explore the history of Event Camp and showcase the first regional one, Event Camp Twin Cities (ECTC), as a "Meeting Accomplished" in the winter issue of the magazine. A hybrid event, ECTC, held in September 2010 at McNamara Alumni Center, served as an innovation lab for planners and allowed attendees to participate on site, online and through Pods. Read the story for a full synopsis.

Because Event Camp is a new concept and keeps growing (Mark Your Calendar: Event Camp National Annual Meeting in Chicago, Feb. 11-13, 2011), we thought we'd point out where to go to get further acquainted with the idea, find more information and read thoughts about the Event Camp experience from attendees. 

RESOURCES:

• National Event Camp website with info about starting your own Event Camp as well as updates on the upcoming event in Chicago. 
• Event Camp Twin Cities website
• Video archive of disucssion sessions at Event Camp Twin Cities (with session summaries)
• Podcast from Acronym Soup Radio: "Social Media Sweet Spot Meets #ECTC10 Team"--KiKi L'Italien interviews Sam Smith and Ray Hansen (organizers of ECTC) and Emilie Barta (virtual moderator of ECTC)
• Webcast by Sonic Foundry (a sponsor of ECTC): "How to Design an Effective Hybrid Event: Lessons Learned from Event Camp Twin Cities"
• Posts by Heidi Thorne (ECTC Twitter moderator): "Event Camp Twin Cities Gets Real, Gets Virtual" and "Successful Hybrid Event Case Study: Event Camp Twin Cities 2010"
• Post by Traci Browne (virtual attendee): "Virtual Events Can Be Engaging – Really"
• Post by Michael McCurry (co-organizer of first Event Camp): "4 Reasons Why Event Camp Twin Cities Hit a Hybrid Events Home Run!"
• Article in Twin Cities Business: "EventCamp: An Innovation Lab for Meeting Planners"
• More thoughts on Event Camp Twin Cities and first Event Camp (held Feb. 6, 2010)
• Event Camp East Coast website
• Discussions about Event Camp East Coast style: "Is Confidential Content the Best Approach for an EventCamp Conference?" by McCurry and "Why The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" by Adrian Segar
• More thoughts on Event Camp East Coast
• Event Camp online community site
• All Twitter comments tagged with #ectc10

 --Ellie M. Bayrd
Associate Editor

[PHOTO: Noah Wolf Photography]

Comments

[Michael Thimmesch]

I was an attendee at Event Camp Twin Cities. What a great event! We experienced new ways of meeting, teaching, and training. And we had a lot of fun at the same time -- yes it can be done!

It was such an inspiring conference I wrote a blog post covering what we did there:
http://www.skylinetradeshowtips.com/new-ways-of-meeting-teaching-and-training-at-event-camp-twin-cities/

[Amanda Fretheim Gates]

Thanks for your comment Mike! And thanks, too, for you contribution to this issue. See Podium article:

http://digital.mn-meetings.com/mn-meetings/2011winter#pg24